Officer revives Maine man waiting for ambulance

Officer Gil Jameson performed CPR, a requirement at Maine Criminal Justice Academy for situations like this one

By Bill Trotter
Bangor Daily News, Maine

ELLSWORTH, Maine — A local police officer is being credited with saving the life of a local man Monday after the man went into cardiac arrest.

Officer Gil Jameson, a 29-year veteran with the local police department, was on patrol on Shore Road around 6:45 a.m. when he was notified that an ambulance had been sent to a medical call at a house on North Street, a short distance away. Jameson went to the location and found that a 63-year-old man was unresponsive and had a faint pulse, Ellsworth Police Chief John DeLeo said Tuesday.

The man's wife was on the phone with dispatchers when Jameson arrived, the chief said. Jameson spoke on the phone with the dispatchers about the man's symptoms but then, before emergency medical technicians with County Ambulance arrived, the man stopped breathing and his pulse stopped.

Jameson performed CPR which, according to DeLeo, is required training at Maine Criminal Justice Academy because of situations just such as the one Jameson found himself in on Monday. By blowing air into the man's lungs and compressing his chest to keep his blood flowing, Jameson was able to keep the man alive until medical personnel arrived.

"You don't use it very often, that's for sure," DeLeo said of using CPR training. "It's pretty rare."

The chief said that he could recall local officers having to use CPR to help someone only "a handful" of times since he joined the Ellsworth Police Department in 1976.

"If he'd been up in northern Ellsworth [miles away], it would have been a different story," DeLeo said in reference to Jameson's location when the call came in. "He was in the right place at the right time."